The New Art Gallery, Walsall, was my next venue. If you haven’t been there, go. A brilliant, focused, gallery.
I found it a few years ago (it wasn’t lost), along with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Bilston Craft Gallery. In my opinion these institutions have a lesson for nearly every other gallery and museum I have visited.
The staff are interested, awake, communicative and helpful. Any one of these virtues would be a plus in some places.
They have also heard of the term ‘interaction’. Sculptures are not so precious that they can’t be touched (well, some anyway). Good information for children and the investigative adult. Good coffee shop (important) in some. Children in pushchairs allowed. Well, you get my drift.
Walsall, which specifically hosts the Garman Ryan collection of Epstein’s work tother with a good representative collection of 20th century art, has the Taylor Wessing photographic prize touring exhibition, together with another exhibition ‘Behind the Mask’ with work by Halim Al-Karim, Glenn Brown, Nae Bunthita Indhawong, Faye Claridge, Hew Locke, Eleanor Moreton, Boo Ritson, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, Zhang Xiaogang.
Go.
